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Five days before public health care exchanges begin accepting applicants nationwide, President Barack Obama took on a celebratory tone as he lobbied uninsured Americans to sign up for affordable health insurance.

“We are now only five days from finishing the job,” Obama said triumphantly in a campaign-style speech hyping the Affordable Care Act at Prince George’s Community College just outside Washington. With the most visible portion of the law, the individual mandate, kicking in on January 1 and the federally sponsored exchanges opening next week, Obama appeared unfazed by a wave of hiccups in its implementation.

Mocking Republicans for their escalating rhetoric on how dire the health care law will prove to be, Obama said one Republican’s assertion that it was the worst law in the nation’s history is an awfully tall order. “You had a state representative somewhere say that it’s as destructive to personal and individual liberty as the Fugitive Slave Act,” the president said as the audience booed. “Think about that. Affordable health care is worse than a law that lets slaveowners get their runaway slaves back.”

Obama accused Republicans of being scared the law will work, summarizing the Republican position as, “We’ve got to shut this thing down before people realize they like it.” And if it succeeds, “it will mean everything they said wasn’t true and they were just playing politics,’ he said.

Running though a long list of benefits and coverage changes in the law, Obama criticized Republicans for trying to defund Obamacare as a condition of keeping the government running.

“The closer we’ve gotten to this date, the more irresponsible folks who are opposed to this law have become,” Obama said, lambasting those in Congress who are pushing the defund effort. “That’s not going to happen as long as I am president,” he added. “The Affordable Care Act is here to stay,” he said.

But Obama also cautioned that the law’s implementation will not likely be smooth. “Like any law, like any big product launch, there are going to be some glitches as this unfolds,” Obama said. “Somewhere around the country, there’s going to be a computer glitch and the website’s not working quite the way it’s supposed to, or something happens where there’s some error made somewhere—that will happen.”

Indeed, just as the event was wrapping up, the administration announced it was delaying a narrow section of the law. Small businesses looking to enroll in federal insurance exchanges won’t be able to fill out online applications on Oct. 1, when the rest of the program rolls out. The will be able to do so only on paper. And the Associated Press reported Thursday that the Spanish-language version of the Obamacare enrollment website, healthcare.gov, would not be ready on Tuesday, Oct. 1.

Yet a smiling president quipped that he is confident that in a few years, when the law is fully implemented, that Republicans will come around to embrace the law and say they—falsely—that they voted for it. “You watch, it will not be called Obamacare,” he said, chuckling. Comparing it to Medicare, Obama said, “One Republican warned that one of these days, you and I are going to spend our sunset years telling our children and our children’s children what it once was like in America when men were free. That was Ronald Reagan. And eventually Ronald Reagan came around to Medicare and thought it was pretty good and actually helped make it better.”

Capping the event, Obama walked off stage to shake hands, to music by his reelection muse, Bruce Springsteen.

We have no choice but to pay for the health insurance of every member in Congress, even every Republican that stands against the working poor being able to see a doctor when they're ill. Senator Cruz's family doesn't have to worry about whose going to pay that big medical bill if a member of his family gets horribly ill. We all pay for that. He won't be sending that money back to his constituents, yet he stands against those much less fortunate having the same that he can take for granted.

Before Social Security, which we all pay into, there was a big uproar even though the elderly suffering a destitute, penniless death before them. Now today it could be said that the vast majority of elderly are pleased and relieved to be cared for in their old age. Yet we begrudge care for the millions of Americans who've had to claim medical bankruptcy or gone to the ER with stage 4 breast cancer because they couldn't afford what Senator Cruz will have for everyday for the rest of his life...peace of mind that the ones he loves will have the medical that everyone in our society should be able to take for granted.

Every industrialized society save our own decided that as a society it's only right to provide care for those who can no longer care for themselves. We are the American Society and we should take pride in the health of our citizens, not belittle the only program that's come along in decades which will provide the same medical care that every single Republic grandstanding against has for themselves. For shame using such an important, essential element of being human, medical care, as a stepping block for creating division in our country and gaining votes for themselves. It's truly perverse and inhumane.

This man is literally forcing, an entire country, to purchase something, without any real choice or decision in the matter, and if we don't purchase it , we are punished for it. Adding to that, the majority of the country, doesn't even want what he is offering.

And he has the nerve to invoke the "slavery" card? What a hypocrite.

With the passing of this unworkable atrocity, he now holds the title of the biggest "slave master", in American history.